The number of people with cirrhosis who need new livers is growing, but organs for transplantation are in short supply. Fortunately, a solution may lie within the patient鈥檚 own body. Nine Japanese people with cirrhosis have been given a pioneering treatment that uses the patient鈥檚 bone marrow cells, and the first results are encouraging. The procedure could potentially ease the symptoms of cirrhosis and make a liver transplant unnecessary.
None of the patients was cured, but evidence from blood samples and liver scans suggested that their organs were functioning better six months after treatment, says Isao Sakaida, head of the team at Yamaguchi University in western Japan that developed the treatment. 鈥淎nother six patients show similar results, but haven鈥檛 been followed up yet for six months, and so weren鈥檛 included in our report,鈥� he says.
鈥淏lood samples and liver scans showed that their organs were functioning better six months after treatment鈥�
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Sakaida took bone marrow cells from the hip bones of patients, extracted the white blood cells and reinfused them through a vein. The hope was that stem cells in the mixture, which are normally locked within the bone marrow, would reach the liver in large numbers and become new liver cells. This is what happened in Sakaida鈥檚 earlier experiments in mice (New 杏吧原创, 18 December 2004, p 6).
Reporting the new results online in Stem Cells (DOI: 10.1634/stemcells.2005-0542), Sakaida鈥檚 team found rising levels of albumin in the blood, a general indicator of the liver鈥檚 health. When the liver is damaged it produces less albumin and discharges a watery fluid, causing a painful swelling called ascites. Scans showed reduced ascites in five of the patients.
Not everyone is impressed, however. 鈥淭he claimed improvement is not convincingly shown,鈥� says Karl-Dimiter Bissig of the Salk Institute in La Jolla, California, who is attempting to treat liver disease by gene therapy.
A similar trial is under way on 18 patients in London, in which stem cells are collected from the patients鈥� blood, not from bone marrow. Preliminary trials, led by Nagy Habib of Imperial College London, have produced anecdotal reports of improvements (see New 杏吧原创, 8 October 2005, p 13).
